Yum, Yum. Look at this crab pot filled with so many mouth-watering Dungeness Crabs. At the grocery store, it can cost up to $9 a pound. That’s pretty darn expensive. Save money by doing it yourself. All you need is a $3,000 boat and $500 in crab pots, rope and buoys.
Not long ago, my wife and I moved to Camano Island, a tranquil, semi-rural community with lots of retirees. People here love four things: God, country, family and crabbing – but if they could only pick one, for sure it would have to be crabbing. People here are seriously into this activity. Just how serious? As you arrive on Camano Island, you’re greeted by a giant metal crab sculpture. The local newspaper is called TheCrab Cracker. And if you confide in someone, “I’ve got crabs”, they won’t recoil in disgust. They’ll reply with, “Fantastic! Mind giving me some?”
Having lived here for two years, I’d never bothered to find out what all the fuss was about. But after relentless pressure from neighbors whose constant nagging included questioning my patriotism, in the end I caved. Last week I finally went crabbing.
Most “crabbers” own their own crab boat and equipment. To get started you need the following essentials:
A motorboat – or if you’re cheap, then a rowboat
At least one, and ideally two or three crab pots
A buoy marker and approximately 100 feet of rope for each crab pot
Bait – typically chicken or turkey legs, or if you’re in a pinch, Lifesavers candies – the crabs grab onto the little hole in the middle and get stuck. Let me know how that works, dude. (This last bait option should only be used if you’re a complete idiot.)
A case of beer, to dull your senses and help you forget about what in the hell possessed you to take a rowboat instead of a motorboat with 25 mph headwinds out there
A sharp knife to kill your small crustacean victims in cold blood – or to take your own life if you have rowed out too far and you suddenly realize you’ll never make it back to shore before nightfall
This is my yearbook photo. Look at those eyes filled with such a clear vision of the future that awaited me… that is, until I left school. This is a short story of my life and dreams that did not go quite as planned.
When I was young, I was always planning out my life, sometimes down to the minute. I was highly organized and self-directed. I knew that to fulfill these plans, hard work was essential. Even as far back as fourth grade, I always studied excessively and earned top grades. In high school I was on several sports teams. I was confident that my efforts would open the door to an Ivy League college.
Things didn’t go as planned. I was wait-listed for Princeton but never accepted. So, I attended my fallback school, University of Virginia. My plan evolved to include a strategic major leading to a lucrative career, falling in love, and slaving through law school with my college sweetheart-then-wife supporting me. I had further planned to love the law and maybe move back home to Albany, NY, taking over my father’s law practice – and living a very comfortable life in upstate New York, raising 2.5 well-behaved brown-haired kids with big blue eyes (like me).
Things didn’t go quite as planned. Turns out Communications isn’t a door-opening major. And though I did attend law school at Ohio State, and my college sweetheart did support me (emotionally, that is), she was wedded to Virginia, not me. Not long after we broke up, my father passed away quite unexpectedly. As I had just begun my second year of law school, I was in no position to take over his practice. So much for the upstate NY picket fence and 2.5 adoring kids who looked like me.
Things were not going as planned. Next thing I knew, I had graduated with my law and MBA degrees and had absolutely no idea what to do next – except that I no longer wanted to be a lawyer. I waited tables for several months as I tried to identify a respectable career opportunity – preferably somewhere in DC or Boston. I did not plan on moving to Miami. But after nine months with no serious job offers, that’s where I finally found a job.
I held on to my plans for marriage to my dream wife. Don’t all men have a plan as to what type of woman they’re going to marry? My plan was to marry some nice American woman of tall stature and brunette hair who shared my love of sports and peanut butter. I certainly wasn’t planning on falling in love with a 5-foot tall, red-headed, freckle-faced Canadian, who had about as much passion for sports as I had for broccoli. But love makes you do crazy things.
And then there was my plan to become a feared but respected marshal of a small western town and marry the brothel owner named Fannie. Turns out those plans went south too, but that’s a story for another post.
I began planning a life with this extraordinary woman, even contemplating settling in Miami. Then I received a call from my manager telling me that if I wanted to remain with the company, I’d have to relocate to Chicago… in the middle of winter… to manage their Midwest region sales office – alone, all by myself. I was SO not planning on that.
Remembering my days waiting tables, I agreed to the move. I planned on redeeming the situation with this company, only the company went out of business. Surprisingly, its parent company offered me a position at their newspaper in Philadelphia. Nothing about Philly or newspapers excited me, but it was within driving distance of Connecticut, where my then fiancée Michele was now living.
Eventually, we got married and Michele joined me in Philadelphia, where we decided to settle down. Life was good and it seemed I was back in the driver’s seat of planning my life. Silly me. Perhaps if I had planned on getting laid off, it wouldn’t have happened. But I hadn’t planned on getting laid off. And Michele hadn’t planned on her employer, IBM, selling off her division. Suddenly, my plans had fallen apart again.
Quite unexpectedly, Michele was offered a job in Seattle – our dream destination. I became a trailing spouse. I had no idea what I was going to do in my next chapter, except for one thing: I would NOT take a job in newspaper advertising sales. Eventually I accepted a job as a newspaper advertising sales manager.
Before long, we decided to start a family. Given our genetics, our kids would almost certainly be pale-skinned and freckle-faced, with blue eyes and reddish brown hair – not what I had planned, but still adorable. Luckily, we never were able to conceive – because a few years later, we were standing in an orphanage in southwestern China, cradling the most beautiful dark-skinned, black-haired, brown-eyed baby girl. A year later we went back to China to adopt our second beautiful daughter.
For years I had worked in newspapers, followed by a series of jobs in fast-paced technology startups that required me to put in 60+ hours a week. I was exhausted. More importantly, I was missing my kids and their childhood. So, I abandoned my career plans and took a less demanding job in a small business, in order to have more time with my family.
I figured I would work there a few years, enjoy family life, and plan my next major career move. But things didn’t quite go as planned. I stayed at this last job for the next two decades until I retired. I planned lots of adventures for this sunset chapter of my life. And then, I unretired. Oh well, my knees can no longer handle racquetball 3 times a week anyway.
Many many things in my life did not go as planned. Like marrying a foreigner and raising two adopted daughters. I’ve learned that sometimes, the best plans are the ones that you don’t see coming.
A few years ago, Michele became tired of living in “cookie cutter suburbia” as she called it. I was leery of leaving our neighborhood, our friends and the house our kids called home. But my wife is a smart person (no comments on her choice of husband) and we found ourselves moving to a charming island far from Seattle into a lovely home overlooking an idyllic view. That was never part of my plan.
As I look back on the past five decades, I realize that time and again, the direction of my life did not go as planned. There have been many twists and turns, some disappointments, even a few deeply scary times – and countless happy surprises.
If someone told me when I was still in high school that I would marry a Canadian artist, become the father of two delightful daughters from China, move to an island in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific Northwest, and start writing a humor blog, my first response would have been, “What is a blog?” But my second response would have been, “No way. I have a very different plan.”
In looking back, I’m grateful that in my life, things didn’t always go as planned.
That’s the view from the bleachers. Perhaps I’m off base.
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Behold my ingenious solution for ending all wars: Put down the guns and missiles. Pick up a cupcake. Nobody can stay mad when they’re scarfing down a red velvet cupcake – except for Genghis Khan. He hated everybody – and was allergic to flour. So sad.
As a retired five-star general in the US Air Force who served in both Gulf wars, and is occasionally accused of being mildly delusional, I consider myself an expert in military strategy, international diplomacy and the board game RISK.
In my youth, I sought power, prestige, and a dress uniform filled with shiny medals. With the wisdom of age, I now realize that what really matters in life are three things: Kindness, Compassion, Integrity and Meat Lovers’ Pizza. Okay, technically, that’s four things. Thankfully, throughout my prestigious Pentagon career, I was always surrounded by colonels who were better at math than I was.
Where am I going with this? Hell if I know. My ADHD medication hasn’t kicked in yet. But I think my point was that the world is falling apart. Tensions are ramping up along the Israel-Gaza border, in the streets of Venezuela, and among long-suffering Baltimore Orioles fans who bought season tickets this year. They chose poorly.
People are fearful that our country will get dragged into yet another armed conflict in the Middle East or North Korea. Fortunately, I have just the plan to de-escalate these hostilities. Two words: CUP CAKES! Okay, I’ve just been informed by one of my colonels that ‘cupcakes’ is, strictly speaking, one word. But who’s counting?
My point is: Nobody can resist cupcakes. Period. The End. When was the last time you saw people fight when cupcakes were being served (unless it was arguing over dibs on the last one)? If one of your co-workers brings cupcakes to the office to share, it is undeniably far and away the single best thing that will happen to you that entire day – unless you win the Pennsylvania $100 million lottery that day. Then, yeah, arguably that would be slightly better. I know your in-laws never approved of you marrying their daughter. But I guarantee if you bring cupcakes to the next family outing, they may even start calling you by your actual name.
Imagine if during the Civil War, the Union Generals thought to assault the Confederates with cupcakes instead of guns. The boys in grey, overjoyed at receiving cupcakes, would have put down their bayonets, embraced their brothers in blue, and the slaves would have been freed by dinner time. There is the remote possibility that the unarmed Union troops would have been annihilated, but they’d have died with a smile – and cupcake crumbs – on their faces.
Had Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat Cupcakes” instead of “Let them eat cake,” the peasants may well have stormed the bakeries instead of the Bastille, Marie would have saved her neck, and France would still be a monarchy today. Okay, that last consequence might not please everyone’s palette. And Marie would have no doubt been voted the most popular queen in French history in a Twitter insta-poll, had Twitter existed back in 1793. #MarieAntoinette #letthemeatcupcakes.
Think about how WW II could have ended years sooner if instead of dropping bombs on Germany, we dropped thousands of German Chocolate cupcakes instead – maybe with those cute little mini-parachutes. Admittedly that would have been quite the added expense. (Note: If you run out of cupcakes, free kittens is a great back-up plan. They can be airdropped as well, but with slightly bigger parachutes.) In my assessment, countless lives would have been spared – albeit shortened due to the serious spike in cholesterol from all that cupcake binging. But then, that’s how the cookie – or cupcake – crumbles when you start a war with the makers of Betty Crocker chocolate fudge cupcakes.
Imagine if in the Battle of Bunker Hill, the American cannons had fired cupcakes instead of cannonballs. The Revolutionary War would have been over in days, not years – and we’d still be pledging allegiance to the Queen. Maybe that would not be such a bad thing right now.
I have no doubt that the Iraq War could have been averted if we had used a carrot and stick approach – make that a carrot (cup)cake and stick approach:
“Saddam, you have a choice: Free your people now and step down from power, and we’ll give you a lifetime’s supply of carrot cupcakes, or we will erase that smarmy mustache off every single statue of you.”
I am convinced he would have jumped at the carrot cupcakes option – unless he was more of a Snickerdoodle cupcake fan. But what are the odds of that? As for Desert Storm, had I been in charge of military strategy, I would have gone with Dessert Storm instead.
By the way, a lot of people worry that Donald Trump won’t leave the Oval Office even if he loses the 2020 election. But have you ever checked out his diet? Simply present him with a case of 24 Vanilla Salted Caramel cupcakes and a bucket of KFC (flanked by a contingent of 200 Marine Green Berets with assault rifles), and he’d be out the door before he could say, “I’m a very stable genius.”
In conclusion, as a highly respected military strategist and someone who has not lost at the board game Stratego in 20 years, I’m telling you, the key to achieving lasting global peace is through cupcake diplomacy.
There is one small risk, hardly worth mentioning. And that’s if Russian President Putin gets wind of this strategy. That devious dictator might manipulate Trump into ceding Alabama to Russia by giving him a gift basket of assorted cupcakes. That would be a serious tactical error on Trump’s part. If I were the President’s military advisor, I would counsel him to give up West Virginia instead.
That’s the view from the bleachers. Perhaps I’m off base.
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This happy fellow dancing badly is my high school classmate Doug Stone. He partied all the time, was a total slacker and arrived late & drunk to graduation. He now manages a global hedge fund & earns $15 million/yr.
Every three months, like clockwork, I suddenly experience an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy. It happens when my high school alumni newsletter arrives. I went to a private all-boys’ military high school, the Albany Academy, founded in 1813. The school sends out a quarterly newsletter for three reasons:
to update alumni on programs they’ve initiated, like the incredible new state-of-the-art athletic complex
to not so subtly solicit generous donations to fund the incredible new state-of-the-art athletic complex
and most importantly, to invite alumni to send in updates about their booming careers (and invite them to share their riches to offset the cost of that incredible new state-of-the-art athletic complex)
I don’t normally suffer from poor self-esteem. I feel fairly good about most of my vocational moves – even my current ten-year gig as a humorist, despite the fact that it is a source of constant embarrassment to my wife and kids.
I generally avoid contact with most of my high school classmates because it invariably degrades into a rencounter among alpha males for top honors in career achievements. I’ll bump into someone from my graduating class who had been a stoner and slacker and barely eked by with a C- average. In the first minute of our encounter, he informs me that he’s now Chief of Neurosurgery at the Mayo Clinic. Or perhaps he invented GPS technology or won the Nobel Prize in Mathematics. Then comes that awkward moment when he asks what I’ve been up to and I am thrust into the awkward moral dilemma of whether to tell him I’m the CEO of a multinational technology firm or Ambassador to France. I usually just dodge the entire issue by vaguely alluding that he does not have the proper security clearance for me to divulge the details of my amazing story. (more…)
This is the steamy story of Leonardo – and his many romantic conquests. His sexual desire was insatiable. The fairer sex was no match for his animal magnetism.
When I was a young child, I had a very unusual friend who, how should I put this delicately – had some rather strong urges. His name was Leonardo. I met him when I was in seventh grade. Leonardo was the unemotional, quiet type. But there was one thing I noticed that was a bit odd about Leonardo. He seemed to have an unusual sexual appetite, particularly for someone so young. He fooled around a lot. When it came to romance, Leonardo was an animal.
He pursued sexual relationships with too many partners to recall. There were Lucy, Angel, Daisy, Chloe and Pepper, to name a few. But Leonardo didn’t always stay in his own lane. There were also Charlie, Toby and Max, and many others. Honestly, I couldn’t keep up with Leonardo’s endless series of objet’s d’amour.
His relationships never seemed to last very long. As soon as he got bored with one partner, Leo, as I called him, was off to his next roll in the hay. This went on for years. From what I could tell, he never gave these dalliances a moment’s reflection. Before long, Leonardo was off in search of his next Mona Lisa.
To be honest, I never said anything to Leo about my disapproval. I had no idea what his appeal was. What was his magnetic power over all these girls – and guys? What exactly did they see in him? Even at his youthful age, it was obvious to me that Leo had no discernable skills of any kind – other than his apparent sexual prowess. Not to be judgmental, he never came across to me as being very smart. It was not like he had six-pack abs or a killer smile. And he never cleaned up his place. It was always a total pigpen. But none of that seemed to matter in his relentless pursuit of sexual partners.
Then one day, a few years into our friendship, I introduced Leo to a new friend – Alexander. I thought they might hit it off as buddies. When I first saw them interact, I noticed that they just stared at each other, completely speechless, almost like they knew each other from somewhere but couldn’t place it. Then Leo whistled at Alexander. I have no idea why. But I could tell that they seemed to connect in some odd, almost intimate way.
As time went on, Alexander and Leo hung out together every day. They were almost inseparable. I never could quite figure out the nature of their friendship. Leo never talked about it – at least not with me. But it became clear that he had feelings for Alexander.
Then one day, I stopped by to find Leo and Alexander lying together – with a baby. And not just any baby. It turned out to be Leo’s baby! That’s when, to my shock, I discovered that Alexander was in fact Alexandra – a girl! But she had never once corrected me when I called her Alexander. I had no idea. Leo was way too young to be a dad, I thought.
I am not one to judge, so I tried to be happy for Leo and Alexander, er, I mean Alexandra. But I wondered quietly, how long would it be before Leo abandoned Alexandra and their offspring? I was 18 when this happened. And it was time for me to head off to college.
I remember the day I finally said goodbye to Leo. I was at a loss for words. He couldn’t speak either. As I headed out the door, Leo just looked back at me, silently, with those impenetrable dark eyes. He too must have been sad because he couldn’t even muster up a smile. He just whistled and turned away. Then he started eating a carrot, something he always liked to do. Because Leo loved carrots, just like any other guinea pig.
That’s the view from the bleachers. Perhaps I’m off base.
Note: This is a true story. Leonardo was my guinea pig. I got him for my birthday in seventh grade. He routinely had sex with any guinea pig placed in the same cage with him, including Alexander, who I purchased (thinking it was a male) at the pet store to keep Leonardo company.
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